Alison Thewliss: This could not be a more timely debate. My constituents and people across the country are looking with great apprehension at the winter to come, fearful about how they will make ends meet. I welcome the Minister to his post, and I appreciate what he said about the economic support offered, but that is not unique to this Government or any other. Governments around the world have sought to support their citizens through this pandemic, and many have done so more compassionately and more competently than those sitting across from us on the Tory Benches.
Many have done that from a better starting point, too, without public services stripped bare from a decade of austerity and a welfare state that punishes people for their circumstances, and without the worst inequality in north-east Europe. And none of them has embarked upon a project so thoroughly deficient and self-defeating as Brexit, which has left businesses carrying higher costs, shelves empty, and skilled people—our neighbours and friends—leaving this island in their droves because this UK Tory Government have made them feel so unwelcome. Scotland voted for none of this.
To the here and now, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have food shortages and price rises, inflation increasing, cuts to universal credit and tax credits, the end of the  pensions triple lock, a regressive national insurance hike, the end of furlough and the self-employment income support scheme—for people who were lucky enough to be eligible for that scheme rather than excluded from it—and now the prospect of spiralling energy bills as we head into the depths of winter.